Teachers need resources and support, not blame, writes Dave Eggers in the New York Times. (Shutterstock)

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When America fails in combat, we don't blame the troops for being lazy, we blame the top brass. So why is it that our response to a failing education system is to blame the teachers? asks Dave Eggers, writing with Nínive Clements Calegari in the New York Times. When combat goes poorly, our response is to give the troops better weapons, training, and resources—and teachers deserve no less. But with more than half of America's 3.2 million teachers set to retire in the next 10 years, Eggers calls this a "rare chance" for America "to prove we are serious about education."

Salary is an important start, as teachers earn 14% less than other professions with similar education levels, leading to few graduates wanting to teach and a high turnover rate for new teachers. Eggers recommends raising starting salaries from the current $39,000 to around $65,000, as current salaries are too low to attract first-rate university graduates. That would be very expensive, but Eggers compares it to the space race or the interstate highway system. "We had the vision and we had the will and we found a way," he writes.

When combat goes poorly we don't blame the troops, wht do we blame the teachers when education fails? Well for one, combat involves life and death and comparing the two is about as stupid as this article. Everyone in America has been through the education system, very few the military. I don't blame teachers though. I think it's the administration and how the system is desinged. In this case, the unions should take a big part of the blame but administrators who teach no one and suck the biggest salaries aren't getting it done plain and simple and are rarely held accountable.

MarcMeinzer

May 2, 2011 8:50 AM CDT

reply to Queenb37 made earlier which I missed origininally: Kids who cannot cope with school for whatever reason are not "degenerates" and there are no plans in the offing to make them disappear. Here in Cuyahoga County we have county schools for the profoundly disturbed and those with severe oppositional-defiant personality disorder. Such programs need to be expanded but in general there need to be alternative tutoring centers for less disturbed kids who still cannot learn for whatever reason. When such kids are left in mainstream classes they become chronic disruptors making it impossible for the other kids to concentrate. The real villain here is not misfits per se but the misguided trend towards "mainstreaming". As my boss at South High in Cleveland used to say, "everyone is not the same; don't treat the kids as if they're all alike, because they're not." So no one gets thrown on the garbage heap. Kids are not garbage and I do respect their individuality. More to the point, if someone is already 17 and only a ninth grader since they've never earned any high school credits then they need to think about switching to GED. In terms of my being "uneducated" I have a B.S. Educ. from Miami of Ohio which in US News' last rankings was 79th nationally among "national" universities and I scored 650 history subject and 700 verbal on the GRE. Admittedly I am quasi-imbecilic in advanced mathematics in spite of the fact that I was the assistant navigator on a nuclear submarine. Navigation is really only 6th grade arithmetic. And finally, it needs to be noted that many countries outscoring us don't have the extremes of economic inequality that we do or a history of having enslaved an entire group of people thereby holding them back for generations afterwards. In a country like Finland everyone is pretty much the same.

SeanShawn

May 2, 2011 5:02 AM CDT

Not sure what Country this guy inhabits.. but "more" money for anything is a pipe dream. Americans want more money for education, social security, medicare/medicaid, plus their taxes are too high.. um and hey, get cracking on that deficit already.. as long as fixing it has absolutely no effect on us whatsoever... unless it's positive.. like lower taxes. PS - my iphone sucks. PPS - Doritos yumm. PPPS - NEW IPHONE JUST CAME OUT!!